Lectures on the rise and development of medieval architecture; vol. 1

by Sir George Gilbert Scott

Fig. 175.—Capitals, north side of Choir Lincoln Cathedral.

You must not, however, rest here: you must draw artistically and carefully from the more decorative portions of the several works. There is a perfect study of carved foliage in each of the divisions of the work. There are noble portals,[70] one of which, in particular, is itself worthy of a special visit to Lincoln, and of the devotion to it of a considerable amount of time. There is also a great amount of very fine figure sculpture, not only in the triforium of the “angel choir,” but in the portal just mentioned, and on a few of the buttresses around it. These merit your most careful drawing, as they are some of the finest examples in this country. There is also a good deal of beautiful figure carving of a rather later date in the wooden bosses in the cloister, and some of a still later age in the stall work of the choir. I have already mentioned the sleeping soldiers under the Easter Sepulchre.

There are also a few remains of early wall painting. The largest amount is to be found in a chapel at the south-western angle of the nave, where a wall, the result of an alteration almost contemporary with the Early English chapel, has been richly decorated with bands of foliage, etc. These are now oddly intermixed with some decorations of the seventeenth century, but are readily distinguishable, and are a very useful series. Traces of decoration may also be found in the vaulting of the church itself and elsewhere. The stained glass in the circular window of the north transept is very fine, and merits close study, as also do the remains of that which once filled windows of the eastern part of the church, as well as remnants in other parts. All these, and a hundred other features, should be most carefully and studiously drawn from; indeed, there are few cities in Europe from which so vast an amount of information and instruction can be drawn—lessons not limited to the cathedral, but extending throughout the town, and consisting of domestic as well as ecclesiastical buildings.

I have only taken Lincoln as a specimen. The same course applies cæteris paribus, to all of our cathedrals. Look, for instance, at Canterbury.[71] What a magnificent and instructive series of objects of study does it offer! The Early Norman of Lanfranc and his immediate successors; the gorgeous later Norman of Conrad, including, probably, the beautifully ornamented shafts in the north-eastern part of the older crypt, and in the cloister-like building lying to the north of the same; the work of William of Sens (without studying which no one can thoroughly understand the English transition), and that of his English successor and pupil, which carries on the change a little farther. The charming developed Early English in the walls of the cloister; the early Decorated of Peckham’s tomb and the later Decorated of the lower stage of the chapter-house, of the enclosure of the choir and of St. Anselm’s Chapel; followed up as they are by fine works of later styles and accompanied by collateral work of the greatest value, both around the cathedral itself, in the remains of St. Augustine’s Abbey, and in other buildings in the city; form of themselves the groundwork for a course of study which would, if earnestly pursued, give the student a complete foundation on which all his future knowledge might well be based.

A comparison of William the Englishman’s work with that in the Castle Chapel and Castle Church at Dover would be interesting, as probably showing the works of the same hand; and a comparison of these, on another occasion, with the more thoroughly English work of the same period at St. Cross, and other buildings in which the English and French transition seem to work hand in hand, as Glastonbury and the rather later work at Chichester, followed up, again, by a study of the Northern transitional examples, would give a pretty perfect knowledge of this most instructive, perhaps, of all periods of English architecture.

I will not, however, weary you with barren bills of fare and outline tours, but will content myself with saying that the same course of close all-gathering study must be followed up wherever you go, whether making a tour of village churches or of the great northern abbeys, or seating yourselves down before a majestic cathedral.

Architecture properly so called, wood-work, metal-work, decorations, stained glass, and every form of art and workmanship, must be studied as if you had to perform like work for yourselves; and you must make yourselves perfect masters of it in every way; and, moreover, you must study the object and meaning of everything so as in every way perfectly to understand its motive, whether ritual, constructive, iconographic, artistic, or simply utilitarian.

I will make one other suggestion as to your English studies. You cannot be always making tours, but you need to be always studying. Do not, then, neglect those objects which surround you while at home. You have at your doors, if you live in London, abundant objects to occupy such incidental hours as you may have at your command.

To begin with, you have Westminster Abbey, the study of which may supply your leisure moments for life. What an inexhaustible fund of material of all kinds we have here! Of the earlier periods we have objects which—if not artistically important—possess at least a deep antiquarian interest; for we retain extensive remnants of that work of Edward the Confessor which a contemporary writer tells us was the very first erected in England in the “new manner of building;” meaning the Norman Romanesque as distinguished from the Saxon, which latter, curiously enough, had been viewed by those who practised it as being Roman. Then, we have the Late Norman of St. Catherine’s or the Infirmary Chapel. These are but incidental objects of interest, but how different is the case with the abbey church itself!